There was a girl who believed in fairy tales.
So vehemently did she believe that one day, as she sat alone in her room in her little village, patting her rather robust cat, she decided that she would climb to the top of the tallest hill that lay in the forest beyond and wait there for her love. The night of her decision, she went to sleep smiling, imagining what love might feel like.
She imagined it might feel like being hugged from the inside out. Like falling freely off a mountain and landing comfortably in a cushy pile of warm snow.
She also imagined what her love might look like, and how he might act. She thought that he would be strikingly handsome, quick to protect her from harm. Burly, strapping, brave, kind, with only her in his mind, and their future weighing importantly on his conscience.
The next day she set off, leaving everything she knew behind. She wore her favourite pink dress with the lace and puffy sleeves, because she felt it was befitting of a princess, and so she declared herself to be as she began her trek up through the forest and up the hill. Her chubby cat was hot on her heels.
A few days into her journey, when the labour of her trek started to take its toll, and her dress was muddy from the dishevelment of nature, her fat cat died of the strain. She looked back at him and sighed regretfully, for his premature passing had created a delay in her plans and she was hurried to get to the top of the hill so that she might wait there for her love.
Nevertheless, she did love her cat, and so she obliged his memory with enough kindness to dig for him a tiny little grave, where she plopped his newly lifeless fat body in to wither away in the dirt. On the top of his burial she placed a makeshift tombstone, which was as fat as her cat had been, and which she thought honoured his chubby memory very nicely.
With the unpleasantness of that business settled, the girl continued her hike up the hill. It was a very large hill indeed, much larger than she initially thought, and so impossible did the task of reaching the top seem to be that the girl decided that halfway up should do just as well. And so when she at last came upon a stone which she discerned beautiful enough to house her behind, she sat gracefully upon it and began waiting, and waiting, and waiting.
For a full year she waited there, and never even once did she eat, drink, or sleep. Her nourishment came from the air, from the trees and the grass and the rain. She spent every moment imagining how beautiful she must look upon the stone, how graceful, and how awed her love would be when at last he came and beheld her in his own eyes.
Another year passed like this, and then another, until she had been waiting there for ten long years. She wondered at her love’s delay, and thought that though he must be racing toward her, he was encumbered by countless heathens and evils which he must first defeat as a test to claim her love. And so the waiting continued.
And continued.
And continued.
At last, after seventy long years of waiting, the girl’s patience had reached its end. She felt suddenly hungry, thirsty, and tired, and decided she might as well go home. She began to walk down the hill, but found that in her old age her footing was not so stable, and her muscles, deprived for years upon years of exercise, had little strength to keep her upright. But she had always been a woman of determination, and so she carefully stepped her way down the hill. Eventually she came upon her fat cat’s tombstone, but alas it was night and she could not see. She tripped, and went tumbling down down down the hill until at last she amassed at the very bottom amongst a slew of twigs, leaves, and mud.
Covered in disgust, her dress’s puffy sleeves sadly depuffed, the lace ruined, and the pink faded from the long years, the girl lay there in stillness contemplating her very wasted life.
She thought herself a very silly girl indeed.
Some call it red 